Rosary Beads
by happen0stance
Summary: His life had collapsed around his feet in the glow of that green curse, the peices rolling away from him, like the lost beads of his once-treasured rosary. His life ended, his heart continued beating. SBRL. Oneshot.


**Warnings: **Yet another attempt at Sirius/Remus…the fact that it is _my_ attempt is what I'm warning you of. (_Death, slash, suicidal thoughts, overall general badass-ish-ness)_

- - - - - - - - - - - -

It's always the same. The same thudding beat of your heart. The same moment when your body forgets it needs oxygen. The same rushing in your ears. The same feeling of complete and utter hopelessness. Your world has ended yet again. Dead.

He remembers when his mother died. So many different stories, murder, sickness, old age. It all added up to a short note written in the scrawl of a broken man. He still remembers the post-script: _can you stay at school over christmas_. He remembers his first thoughts. No capital letters, no punctuation. He remembers the bile that rose in his throat, the tears that collected in his lashes and the shake of his hand. He burnt the letter in the dormitory fire in the embrace of his three friends. He imagined the flames that curled and burnt around the edges of his father's script licking at his feet. Swallowing him whole.

After that the downward spiral of death began. It seemed to him that his life was a string of deaths and funerals, from one to the other continued. Like the beads in the rosary he had snapped in a moment of despair after his father's suicide. His mother, his father, his pet owl, his next door neighbor, the pretty Muggle girl he met as a child. James and Lily Potter. That one burnt like the fires he expelled from his wand into the air in a blind fit of rage and pain. He remembers swearing into the night. Cursing every being that had ever walked this world.

His life continued on, despite the numerous times he had considered aiming a gun at his head, a wand to his heart.

He coped through the thick and the thin; he smiled, and laughed and faked his way through the years. And then it happened. An old flame was relit, hands were on his body and he was falling in love like the fourteen year old school-boy he once was. He could genuinely say he was happy. He could pull his face into a smile without wanting to cry. He could laugh without hating his voice. Life was dark but brighter than before.

God had mocked him. He waved in front of his eyes what could have been then turned on his heel. Dead. It hit him hard and the tears seemed never ending. They fell in thin reddening tracks, collected in the corner of his eyes, dripped in round drops from his chin to his lap. He didn't bother to make them stop. The wet stains on his pants reminded him of blood. He hated blood. His hands were wet.

He thought about living. About pretending everything was alright. That was how he worked. He faked himself into thinking that every single little thing didn't remind him of _him_. For days, weeks, months until all of a sudden he realizes that this fake-reality has in fact become reality and he can look out the window without seeing snow angels and frozen kisses in the front lawn. He can hold his wand without hearing that smooth, confident voice muttering hexes in his ear. He drinks his coffee without imaging those hands wrapped around his cup. He can live without _him_.

This doesn't stop the pain and it's during the night that the memories crawl from their hiding-holes and invade his thoughts. The dreams prove to be his undoing and as the years pass he has difficulty separating them from his reality. He sleeps less and drinks more and he hates the effects these additions are having on his body. The hallucinations he can deal with, his lack of ability to pull himself from his bed he cannot.

He hates the way they baby him, the way they simply accept what he has become. Some day's he wishes they'd scream at him, drag his pathetic body from the bed and sneer as he writhes on the floor. He wants to be humiliated and laughed at. He wants to be called the many names he has been called over his life.

Freak. Loser. Pansy. Pervert. Fag. Weakling. Whore. Animal. _Half-breed. _

He wants to die by the hands of another; he wants their hands around his throat. He wants to die by another's hands just to be closer to _him. _Just to end it all. He wants to lose the little control he has left and gasp for breath whilst he's doing so. They don't touch him anymore though.

In his dreams he dies, over and over and over and over. These dreams make him sweat in arousal. The pain makes him hot, and this makes his mouth dry in disgust at what he has become. He throws up over the side of his bed and turns on his side when Molly bends to her knees to clean up when she enters the room hours later. She doesn't speak and she doesn't touch him and she doesn't look back when she walks to the door.

On the rare day he has enough strength in his legs to stand he makes his unsteady way to the room three doors and cupboard down the hallway and to the bed that always seems to be warm and waiting for him. He collapses onto the soft covers and reaches with pasty fingers under the bed to draw forward the dusty, well-used shoebox. He knows it looks and sounds and probably is as clichéd as the Muggle movies they used to watch (_the depressing relative rifling through the old photographs of their lost loved one and finding nothing but smiles and 'new beginnings')_ but as he lifts the lid he couldn't care less.

Pictures blend in a sickening swirl of multi-colored beanies and black band-shirts, leaving Remus with nothing but a cold heart. He gazes at the smile that once made him happy to be alive, in a vain attempt at coaxing a smile out of himself. But all he see's are too-sharp teeth, narrowing eyes and the flash of green that ended two lives that dark night that seemed so long ago. He was numb to the tears that fell and his fingers that clenched over the moving photograph in his hand. To the snow outside, the Christmas celebrations below and the fluttering of his heart. Slipping further into himself, awakening the memories, until all he saw was black. _Black._

**Author's Notes: **I don't know how religious Remus is or whether he ever would have carried a rosary but I liked the imagery and so kept it. Don't ask me where this came from 'cause I have little idea myself. It took a twist near the end and I wasn't sure to have the whole 'death-wish' part but it was there and I couldn't remove it without removing the backbone of the story. Set after Sirius' death in Order of the Phoenix. Thanks a lot to _awn_ for rating this for me, if you'd ever looked at one of my ratings before and gone '_omgWTF?!1' _it was because I hadn't used their help. Thanku!


End file.
